THE N W YORKER , menta] uniform. Similarly, the Nazi cure for unemployment was on the best pharaonic pattern: the regImented labor army. Mean while, the military spirit of brutal drill and mindless obedience was carried into the schools and uni- vershies, where, as had been proved during the First World War, it had never been entirely absent since the day of Frederick the Great. In short, the Germans not merely enlarged the di- Inensions of the ancient megamachine but made important innovations in the techniques of mass control-Innova- tions that later corporate megamachines are now perfecting with the aid of spy- ing devices, opinion polls, market re- search, and computerized dossiers on private lives. In the background, the torture chamber and the crematorium, if not planetary incineration, are ready to complete the job. But every totalitarian system bnngs its own nemesis, to the very degree that the system is self-sealed-incapable of self-criticism and self-correction. \Vith poetic justice, the first victims of the' new", stem were the leaders theln- selves, whose contro] was undermined by self-induced phobias, hallucinations, and prefabricated lies that they them- selves had come to believe Witness Stalin's stubbornness in rejecting au- thentic information about Hitler's ap- proaching attack on Russia-a calami- tous misjudgment that caused incredible suffering and military humiliation- and, indeed, almost lost Russia the war. At the end of the conflict, the Nazi Ineg<lmachine had become the victim of the ideological perversities and emo- tional aberrations of its leaders; the} had wasted on the occupation and greedy eXploitation of peripheral countries military forces that could have been concentrated in combat, they had un- dermined military and in ustrial effort by exterminating millions of noncom- batant Russians and Poles for the mere gratification of their pathological hatred and contempt, and they had further de- prived themselves-by starvation, tor- ture, and death-of six million Jews, many of whom, until they faced their incredible fate, had remained patriotic Germans, whose labor might have been u cd to increase production. "That with all these screaming errors of judgment 'lnd miscarriages of mili- tary effort, on Inight think that the Russian and the Nazi megamachines would have passed completely out of existence, more discredited than the one that had flourished in the Pyramid Age. Unfortunately, the errors com- mitted by the Naz:s did not prevent them from at first achieving a series of astounding military successes, and these 87 victories brought about a recrudescence of the megamachine in Britain and the United States By the curious dialectic of history, Hitler's enlargement and refurbishment of the Nazi megama- chine gave rise to the conditions for creating the counter-instruments that would conquer it and temporarily wreck it. F'ar, then, from being utterly discredited by the colossal errors of its ruling elite, the megamachIne was rebuilt by the Western Allies on ad- vanced scientific lines, with its de- fective human pdrts replaced bv me- chanica] and electronic and chemical substitutes, and-eventually-coupled to the source of power that has made all other modes of power production as ob- solete as Bronze Age missiles. Thus, ': in the very act of dying, the Kazis .: transmitted the germs of their disease to their American opponents-not onlv the methods of compulsive organization and physical destruction but the moral corruption that made It feasible to em- ploy these methods without stirring ef- fective opposition. ^ """t<'- ,.. . '::" : \.:. <t' ....., '\ . / '? \.. , < ) 4 ...... i..(o J' . ; ' ., . /' 4" ...> ' .. i: $ .::': ':'. . THE NUCLEAR COALITION '" '^ 4""' . ..--- ;:". . :" /.... T o effect the implosion of ideas and forces that finally produced the atomic reactor and the atom bomb, more than three centuries of preparation had been needed. But even so no proposal of this magnitude could have been broached with sufficIent au- thority to overcome the peacetime iner- 6a of "business as usual" had there not been a direct military challenge from the refashioned megamachine: the vivid possibility that German physicists would soon place within Hitler's hands an "absolute" weapon, b) means of which he might blackmail a1] other nations into submission. Such a threat of world- wide domination by the totalitarian AXIs-Germany, Italy, Japan, and (prior to June, 1941 ) Russia-brought about a similar concentratiun of physIcal power on the part of the "democra- cies," even before the United States had been dragged in to war by its enemies. At that time, it was plain-though the memory of this reality has unfortunate- ly faded-that no compromise with the victory-intoxicated Axis, stil] less any mode of passive or non-violent resist- ance, such as that practiced bv the na- tives against the British governn1ent in India, could halt their accelerating program of enslavement and exter- mination. If proof were still needed, the fate of the Jews and several na- tional groups under the Nazis-a total of some twenty million Inassacred- supplied it. Once the 1939 war enveloped the planet, the necessary components of the .' 1\ ' ..::::.. ....^x ; I:... j" -i .- :" í--.ø ." * ./0 " , / ..... .:" """ ;s , v: (In Orbit' a super insulation process used for the Apollo astronauts-exclusively ours! Protects against cold, wind, rain. Ultra light-weight, Travis' Dacron@ :filled Antron@ nylon, ZE PEL@ :finish Emerald, navy, burgundy or brown reversing to silver. 6 to l6. About $80. B. 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